Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Oldest piece of hardware a user could access the internet with?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 54 posts

Re: Ask HN: Oldest piece of hardware a user could access the internet with?

#21

Post by fogihujy »

Pretty much anything with a serial port and a CPU should be able to get online, provided you have appropriate software.

Most computers built after 1980 should be able to do it with some tinkering. Pretty much anything built after 1990 should be fairly trivial to get online.

If you want something somewhat usable, then Lynx/Links running on whatever a modern Linux distro can boot on should suffice.

I used a modem to get online with my Amiga 600 (7 MHz 68000, 2 + 4 MB RAM) in the 90's. It was perfectly possible to use things like IRC, eMule and a WWW browser on it, but the modern web will be quite unusable with aMosaic...

Re: Ask HN: Oldest piece of hardware a user could access the internet with?

#22

Post by iforgotpassword »

h2odragon wrote: post #7

"access"... If you wanted, an old vt100/vt220 or whatever other hardware serial terminal you like can be connected to a linux or other system and access a shell account with text browsers etc. In that scenario the terminal is "accessing the internet". (Did this with a Televideo 970 in 2007 iirc for the ebay listing where we sold it) If you want something to run an IP stack, then a 286 running `ka9qnos` is about as sm…

If we're just talking IP and not a full blown browser experience, the original IBM PC is enough. Add an ISA NIC and you're ready to go. With mTCP you got a suite of tools like htget for http downloads, an ftp server, an IRC client, ... 640kb is enough for everybody. ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Oldest piece of hardware a user could access the internet with?

#23

Post by forgotmypw77 »

fogihujy wrote: post #21

Pretty much anything with a serial port and a CPU should be able to get online, provided you have appropriate software. Most computers built after 1980 should be able to do it with some tinkering. Pretty much anything built after 1990 should be fairly trivial to get online. If you want something somewhat usable, then Lynx/Links running on whatever a modern Linux distro can boot on should suffice. I used a modem to ge…

one of the reasons i insist on http support, anything post-95 with a network card is barely a challenge to get online, and it,s nice to browse my own site from whatever device i want to use.

Re: Ask HN: Oldest piece of hardware a user could access the internet with?

#24

Post by ecef9-8c0f-4374 »

> accessing the internet

is too broad. A C64 with a modem can access IRC and BBS

> minimal modification/add-on

This is a bit broad too. Every modern "add-on" has more power most of the old computer they are attached on.

You could run a proxy on the add-on, that would shrink pictures, html and remove https.

Or even simpler. The add-on could do all the computation and just use the old hardware to show the result.

Re: Ask HN: Oldest piece of hardware a user could access the internet with?

#25

Post by fogihujy »

forgotmypw77 wrote: post #23
fogihujy wrote: post #21

Pretty much anything with a serial port and a CPU should be able to get online, provided you have appropriate software. Most computers built after 1980 should be able to do it with some tinkering. Pretty much anything built after 1990 should be fairly trivial to get online. If you want something somewhat usable, then Lynx/Links running on whatever a modern Linux distro can boot on should suffice. I used a modem to ge…

one of the reasons i insist on http support, anything post-95 with a network card is barely a challenge to get online, and it,s nice to browse my own site from whatever device i want to use.

Yeah.

With post-1995 hardware it's mostly a matter of installing a network card + driver, and possibly a TCP/IP stack and a browser, depending on the OS.

Re: Ask HN: Oldest piece of hardware a user could access the internet with?

#27

Post by _b8r0 »

throwitaway1235 wrote: post #6

I just realized the semi-stupidity of my question. I should have said "modern web", considering the ARPANET could be considered a type of "internet" (?) that ran using hardware from 1969? Thank you for the replies though, something to read up on.

I regularly use the Web most days on an Amiga 4000, built in 1992. It's not perfect for everything, but I can use things like search engines, visit web sites over HTTPS etc. I mostly visit Amiga-specific sites that tend to have lower overheads. I've also visited sites like like Twitter, Facebook, CNN etc. in the past.

It should be possible to use older machines to browse the web but it stops being about the machine and starts being more about availability of TLS libraries and rendering engines. In theory an Amiga 1000 (1985) should be able to connect to the Internet and may be able to run AmiSSL and IBrowse with the right upgrades. It might need custom hardware though. I think there's some jiggery pokery that'll allow older Macs dating back to 85 or maybe 84 (I'd be surprised to see an original 128kb Mac but the late 84 512kb model should work) to browse the web without modern TLS.

Re: Ask HN: Oldest piece of hardware a user could access the internet with?

#28

Post by msla »

h2odragon wrote: post #7

"access"... If you wanted, an old vt100/vt220 or whatever other hardware serial terminal you like can be connected to a linux or other system and access a shell account with text browsers etc. In that scenario the terminal is "accessing the internet". (Did this with a Televideo 970 in 2007 iirc for the ebay listing where we sold it) If you want something to run an IP stack, then a 286 running `ka9qnos` is about as sm…

> "access"... If you wanted, an old vt100/vt220 or whatever other hardware serial terminal you like can be connected to a linux or other system and access a shell account with text browsers etc. In that scenario the terminal is "accessing the internet". (Did this with a Televideo 970 in 2007 iirc for the ebay listing where we sold it)

By this standard, I'm accessing the Internet using a flat-panel display.

If something isn't running its own TCP/IP stack, it isn't accessing the Internet.

> There might be a c64 IP stack but at that point its getting technicality again; how much access and function counts?

Being able to talk at least IP and TCP without external help.

Re: Ask HN: Oldest piece of hardware a user could access the internet with?

#29

Post by fogihujy »

classichasclass wrote: post #18
viraptor wrote: post #5

At least as old as Commodore 64: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/cwi/hl/shots.html

So, as the guy who wrote that, it's a cheat. It needs a host running a proxy which does the translation. Yes, I used it myself for some years.

Contiki has a native browser, though: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Contiki

Re: Ask HN: Oldest piece of hardware a user could access the internet with?

#30

Post by h2odragon »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #22
h2odragon wrote: post #7

"access"... If you wanted, an old vt100/vt220 or whatever other hardware serial terminal you like can be connected to a linux or other system and access a shell account with text browsers etc. In that scenario the terminal is "accessing the internet". (Did this with a Televideo 970 in 2007 iirc for the ebay listing where we sold it) If you want something to run an IP stack, then a 286 running `ka9qnos` is about as sm…

If we're just talking IP and not a full blown browser experience, the original IBM PC is enough. Add an ISA NIC and you're ready to go. With mTCP you got a suite of tools like htget for http downloads, an ftp server, an IRC client, ... 640kb is enough for everybody. ;-)

im not looking at that (im certain wonderful cool) tool. it would hurt.

in 1994 i had a 286, ka9q and uucp, to serve email and Usenet to a small number of users. No NICs, all serial. nonprofit IT budgets.

it sucked but im grateful still to those whose software made it possible.

Post reply on HN